Documentary film as punishment
November 2007, a few weeks after my jury trip to the national film festival 44th Golden Orange (not to be mixed with the Armenian Golden Apricot IFF) that is jointly organized with the 3rd International Film Festival Eurasia (not to be mixed with the Eurasia IFF in Almaty, Kazakhstan) – all of it at one place and one time, in the Turkish Antalya.
Even though we were almost hermetically closed in the most luxurious and almost pathologically white hotel on the Mediterranean coast during the whole festival visit, I came home very tired and with mixed feelings. Comparable to my visit in Israel last year, it was a turbulent time during my Turkish visit as well– the trouble at the Eastern Turkish border with Iraq and the PKK. Even the military propaganda images of the local TV channels were similar. Outside, in the city of Antalya, which I did get a chance to see at least this one time, there was a sea of the red national flags (in peoples hands, on the houses, on the cars) and the demonstrating teenagers who were proclaiming in the screaming child voices that the country was theirs - Turkey for the Turks. Goose bumps on my skin.
Back home, I receive an email from one of the documentary filmmakers whose film was in the competition and who’s the only one I can get in contact with, Cayan Demirel. “The recent status of the documentary is as follows: The Copyright and Cinema Directorate of the Turkish Culture Ministry decided that the documentary '38' is not appropriate for the commercial distribution and public presentations. In other words, the screening of the documentary within Turkey is from now on prohibited.”
Am I surprised? No. Yet another prohibition of a film in the country of origin. I WAS surprised that the film was included in the competition of the festival in the first place, as it deals with the case of the village Dersim, in the late thirties, when the assimilation and family separations of the Kurds by a law of 1938 took place. Even though the official document can be seen also in the film, the denial of the fact seemed to be almost the only response. No, the film did not get any prize from us, as unfortunately taking the word Kurd into your mouth during this period was more than daring, and not to be done (even though, according to one saying the Kurds do not exist, they are “Turks from the mountains”). Anyway: none of the documentary films got any prizes, as the jury found them all very weak from the formal point of view, sometimes even unprofessional and very often educational-like. Choosing for the subject, even though the film was not perfect, was not a solution for my Turkish colleagues (with the exception of one open minded person among them).
The jury decision has understandably caused a great disappointment among the filmmakers, and even anger. The jury’s good intention to point out the low quality of the documentary films and to stimulate the quality with this (harsh, we knew) decision did not work out at all. It even worked opposite. The jury was to blame and the Ministry will probably give even less money to the documentary production from now on, and not more investments to get documentaries more professionalized as we hoped.
One thing I understood: there is not a tradition of making creative documentaries here, and not much respect for documentaries in this country as well. It felt like the documentary filmmaking is actually an unwanted or adopted child. My impressions proved to be right when I heard a funny story that is actually not funny at all.
There is a commission in Turkey that follows all the private and commercial channels (from 13 of them, only one seems to be state owned) and watch all their programmes closely for making “mistakes”. What the mistakes are was not specified, the rules are up to the commission. The most interesting fact is the means of punishment that the commission uses!
When a channel is proclaimed to have made a mistake, then they are given a punishment in the form of being “forced” to show a documentary at the time appointed by the commission. It can be prime time, but also in the afternoon. The documentary can be selected by the channel itself, or can be given by the commission.
Hmmm, I do not think documentary filmmaking is a dream job in this country. That comes quite hard to me, living in the Netherlands, a country with such a rich documentary filmmaking tradition, the world’s biggest documentary film festival IDFA, and masters like Joris Ivens, Bert Haanstra, and Johan van der Keuken.
The situation seems to be better in the feature film section and it is wonderful to join the Turkish audiences at the Turkish premieres of Fatih Akim’s The Edge Of Heaven and Semih Kaplanoglu’s film The Egg (the former project of the IFFR’s CineMart). The atmosphere before screenings is great, full of expectations, the excitement almost touchable. The film crews on the stage are proudly introducing their films in the beginning; the audiences are giving them standing ovations at the end. Both of them get several prizes later on - that went well.
I never hear from the festival organisation after the festival has been finished with a loud disco music at the white hotel. Is that a punishment as well, I wonder? The Turks are famous for their hospitality, they say. But there is not even a word of thanks for the work done when we are leaving the place next morning, not a word of good-bye. Pretty disappointing… Maybe it’s a high time for me to take a break in accepting the jury work, as sometimes it becomes such an unthankful and frustrating task…